I wrote a blog about the culture at Microsoft, where employees are evaluated by “stack ranking,” meaning that everyone in every unit is assigned a weighting–best, average, worse. I printed comments by people who had been subject to this system, who said that it stifled creativity and collaboration. I discovered that many major corporations have a similar rating system. At Enron it was called “rank and yank.” Jack Welch of GE championed the idea of finding and firing the laggards.

Something similar is happening now in education. Many of the new state evaluation systems, designed in response to Race to the Top (a font of untested ideas), will evaluate teachers and principals on a bell curve. The bell curve decrees that a certain percentage are at the bottom, no matter how effective they are. Economist Eric Hanushek has proposed that 5-10% of teachers (based on the test scores of their students) be fired and replaced by “average” teachers; he says this will produce incredible results: we will rise to the top of the international rankings and the economy will expand by trillions, just by firing those teachers.

A reader in Memphis noticed that the plan of the Transition Planning Committee (led by Stand for Children and advised by the Boston Consulting Group) proposes stack ranking of teachers:

From p. 56 of the Transition Planning Commission’s recommendations regarding the Memphis merger:

“Measures of success– A meaningful distribution of teacher evaluation scores—approximately 20% evaluated 1s and 2s and less than 20% evaluated 5s– The teacher evaluation is used as the basis for professional development, decisions about who teaches, and compensation.”

Even if the distribution recommendation is simply hypothetical, it’s pathetic.

There is not a school system in America with 1/5 of its workforce comprised of bad teachers. If there were, that district’s HR department would deserve getting canned first.

But let’s assume 20% is actually a solid estimate. The district fires those teachers. Then what? Fire good teachers you’ve scored “ineffective” in the hopes of hiring even better teachers? Great idea. What teacher would want to work in that sort of system?

Like this:

When I read that I wondered if those defending this move in Memphis (I think the paid staff member for SFC was Ms. Bradshaw) knew about this because they stated many times that there have been many open and public meetings involving everyone.

If that is true, and teahers were included, how could this happen? OR do they not know YET?

Other than brand new teachers who are clueless, I can’t imagine anyone would want to teach in Memphis. But, maybe they want brand new teachers or the kind that are not certified the traditional way. They would easier to control and manipulate.

In the meeting the Transition Planning Commission (TPC) had with teachers, the district strongly encouraged all teachers to go in place of faculty meeting. I didn’t go because I knew it would be a waste of time, but my colleagues went. According to them, it was a waste of time. They had a thousand teachers in the auditorium of a high school and no organization for the meeting. Teachers were not given an opportunity to speak the the group as a whole. Instead, they broke off into discussion groups comprised of a large number of teachers and one staff member. Teachers’ suggestions in these groups were written down and supposedly submitted to the TPC. The teachers I spoke to doubted anyone would read their suggestions. Why couldn’t they just ask teachers to email these suggestions, instead of wasting enormous amounts of time at the end of a long school day to organize a thousand teachers into discussion groups?

That would be because they really don’t want or value your opinion. This forum is a dog and pony show to make you think you are a part of the process. They are going to implement the system they want unless too much pressure is applied and people speak out. Even then, they have the money and power. You need to expose their fraudulent ways VERY SOON.

Exactly. Brand new = overwhelmed, just glad to have a job, scrambling to keep up, less tuned in to bigger issues than just getting by each day, and no historical context for concerns raised by veteran staff members. Easy pickings. Cheaper. More malleable.

I teach in one of the grades K-3 in Memphis. In addition to the injustice of using test scores at all in making personnel decisions, K-3 teachers are evaluated based on the test scores of students they have never taught.

Every teacher in Tennessee who teaches K-3 and every art, music, P.E. teacher, and librarian, instead of using their students’ value-added scores for half of their evaluation (because there aren’t any), is assigned their school’s value-added score for half of their evaluation.

This is clearly designed to make the bad schools worse. Already, nearly all of the K-3 teachers at my failing school have transferred to other schools with better school-wide value-added scores. I don’t yet know who the principal has hired to replace them, but I’m guessing many will be TFA types (we also have a TFA-style program here called Memphis Teaching Fellows, run by The New Teacher Project), most of whom will be ineffective their first year.

This legislation is designed to make the bad schools worse, so that they can be closed and turned into charters.

If you read the research, this is not accurate. The students with the smallest gains are those with disabilities, English language learners, and those with learning issues. The AERA and National Academy of Education issued a joint statement saying that those who teach the students with the greatest needs will be penalized by value-added assessments

Students with disabilities are not included in value-added scores in Tennessee. I teach special ed, and 50% of my eval is based on school-level (not personal) data. Even though our TCAP scores place our school in the bottom 5% in the State, our value-added scores have been among the tops in the district. In Memphis, it has been the teachers at the Optional schools who have complained the most about value-added scores, arguing that it’s too difficult to get gains for their students.

You are incorrect. I found a graph of every school’s school wide value-added score in Memphis City Schools. I’m currently trying to find it again to link to it here. It clearly showed that the “failing schools” where a small percentage of students each year are rated proficient are in the area with the smallest growth. True, a few of the “better” schools had scores lower than average, such as Richland Elementary, but teachers are not going to leave those schools because they are well-run, with competent administrators and involved parents. The administrator of a high-performing school, knowing her teachers will have low school-wide value-added, will make sure she gives her teachers high scores on the other aspects of the evaluation. This is not the case in a school with low proficiency levels, where principals are under the gun to give teachers poor evaluations so the district can pass the buck to the teachers. See the TPC’s recommendation that there be “consistency” between principal evaluations and value-added scores.

When many of your students are undiagnosed special education students or they have been diagnosed but are not receiving adequate services because of the ineptness of your school system, they simply are not going to make “gains” on a grade level test that was two or three grade levels above their current reading level when they entered your classroom.

To give you an update on the graph I said I was locating which showed all Memphis City Schools in terms of their value-added scores: The TNDOE appears to have made the TVAAS 2011: Scatterplot Report password-protected since I viewed it on 5/22/2012.

Let’s clear up the confusion around teacher input and the transition plan. There are NO current teachers on the Transition Planning Commission. The TPC appointed NO current teachers to the work groups who prepared the plan. The only input the TPC got from actual teachers was what they allowed them to say at community “listening tours”. These tours were usually about two hours long and held in various parts of the community. I believe there were six of these events. They were open to the public and teachers could attend and speak. The TPC members present answered virtually no questions as these were listening events. I do not call this teacher input. Additionally the teacher unions were intentionally left out of the discussions and were told their input was not needed even though the two unions involved represent over 7000 teachers. Teachers have no idea what is really in this plan.

Tennessee Dept. of Education left their union leaders out of recent USDOE workshops on labor-management collaboration. Hard to collaborate with labor by leaving them out of the meeting. The department attended, as did a few TENN supers and principals–but no union folks. I know because I was there as a state union leader from Delaware.

High turnover is desirable to the “reformers” in order to have a compliant and cheap workforce. I am sure that as veteran teachers move up the salary schedule, that they will also find themselves at the wrong end of the bell.

The documents of the mess in Louisiana. Please forgive that I may not have posted this in the most accessible form but I have cited the resources so all can find them and watch for such language in their state’s legislatures

The Status of the Development of the Value-Added Assessment Model as Specified in Act 54, A Report to the Senate Education Committee and the House Education Committee of the Louisiana Legislature January 12, 2012http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/uploads/19420.pdf start at page 14 for the bell curves

For the concern around the physics teachers, TFA will handle that nicely. Six weeks should do nicely to train someone how to teach magnetism, kinematics, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, nuclear energy, quantum mechanics and lets not forget waves both electromagnetic and sound and of course electricity, power, momentum and gravitational attraction. Yes, six weeks ought to be fine. Teaching some of the kids might be tricky as analyzing physical principles without the necessary math skills poses an additional challenge. I am sure the TFA hopeful history teacher will do just fine teaching physics. There will be no such thing as a shortage as there really is no qualifications necessary to teach and physics, well we all experience physics everyday so how hard can explaining gravity be? Everyone knows about mirrors and lights and electricity. How hard could snell’s law really be? Oh I forgot, the people making these pronouncements about teacher training and qualifications and years of experience and additional training and outside of school skills development- oh those people never actually took physics. They would then know sticking 40 kids in a science class is a really bad idea even if there is a master TFA teacher who is just the tops based on a Gates Metric for teacher stupendousness. Oh don’t even get me started on chemistry. Really chemistry and physics and oh, yeah biology through the lens of the creationists. thats right how hard could it?
No jibe against sociologists but I believe that was Duncan’s major at the august Harvard and although there is a lot of physics in basketball there really is not too much physics that comes into play as a sociology major.

Adam, I agree that the majority of teachers are ignorant of the TPC recommendations pertaining to evaluation and compensation.

The TPC has four town hall meetings scheduled for this week: http://www.ourvoiceourschools.org/. Because of prior commitments in the evenings, I won’t be able to attend any of them. I’m hoping, though, some teachers with knowledge of the recommendations will attend the meetings.

In terms of modifying or eliminating those particular recommendations, I think expressing our views to the school board would be more advantageous given that they’re the ones who will make the final call on the TPC’s plans. I have emailed my concerns to each member and have received a number of replies. I’ve been encouraging other teachers to do the same.

I see there is one union leader out of 21 commission members. Kind of unequal representation, if you ask me. Is this an advisory group or does this group have the power to make decisions? If this were in my state, I would do my damnedest to be there and to be sure that there were plenty of teachers/educators in attendance at every one of these meetings.

From the outset, the TPC has expressed a desire to design a “world-class school system.”

The most concise counter-argument to their recommendations for teacher evaluation and compensation would be the following: “There is not a world-class district in the U.S. or anywhere on the globe that adheres to stack ranking or performance pay.”

Sec. White here in Louisiana is promoting his “Talent Office”.. To further assist districts in this process, the Department of Education has realigned staff support to school districts through the establishment of a Talent Office and a new network structure. These teams, led by former educators and school leaders, will assist school districts as they implement Compass and other components of Louisiana Believes. The network structure will serve as the primary support vehicle for districts as they implement new evaluation systems and standards. School districts will be assigned to one of five networks statewide that will assist in translating educational priorities into outcomes for students. The Department will announce the five networks, their network leaders, and district network assignments next week. http://www.doe.state.la.us/offices/publicaffairs/press_release.aspx?PR=1647

Next week? Mid-July? Just in time to already be too late to actually be effective for the upcoming school year. Like other states, they are making all this up as they go along. Is this any way to run a business?

When I see something like this I always think, “What about Special Ed?” Anyone who reads my posts knows that I come strictly from that angle. It is all I know. Our children come to us because they DO have problems learning. We cannot solve the problem, we can help them learn in spite of them, but except for high functioning autistics and EBDs, they will probably never achieve as well as typical students. The teachers can be penalized for the kids having disabilities and the teachers will get out of special ed. despite the hassles of regular—large classes, no paraprofessional, bad behavior, etc. to save their jobs. There was a girl at the School for the Blind in Macon Georgia, straight A student and totally blind, not just visually impaired who got a Special Education Diploma instead of a College Prep, because there was no way she could do the map section of the Georgia Graduation test. The state had made no accommodations for that problem. This was before so-called accountability, but think about it. Today the teacher would have been penalized because the student was blind!

I also think of the teachers of the hidden special ed kids, moderately retarded and/or autistic, severe, profound and multihandicapped. How are they going to evaluate us? We have the kids who bring extra money into the schools and keep poorly attended ones open. Sometimes our teachers outnumber the regular ones at small schools. The charters and parochials don’t want our teachers or our children. They don’t even have a clue as to what we are doing or why. I always said that I could write an IEP objective to hang a kid by his knees off a light fixture for 20 minutes a day and couch it in language that no one except maybe another SID/PID teacher would know what I planned to do. Our kids don’t take standardized tests. Our classes do not run on the same kind of rhythm as regular or even mild disabilty classes so we are hard to evaluate by visitation too.

This kind of thing could either screw up a lot of good teachers or let a the do-nothings (and there are a few, even in special ed, but we do try to ship them to regular when they are found) get away with murder.

The only fair type of teacher evaluation would be one that is knowledge based and includes standardization based on the teachers’ degrees and experience and the demographics and is computerized so that the evaluator would not know who he or she was evaluating, something somewhat similar the Praxis. This is not what they want to do,of course. It’s not political enough. They claim that standardized test based evaluations are the only way, but don’t factor in issues beyond teacher’s control. They supplement with observations but those are totally subjective even if the principal has a rubric. It is too easy to get rid of the good teachers and keep the ones he likes, are relatives, go to his church, are social butterflies, or dress the way he is turned on by.

Great post! I’m 49 and remember thinking not so many years ago that Hitler and his ideas were something that existed way back in history, way before my time. Now realizing that my having been born less than twenty years after WW2, and that my own past 20 years of life seem like a blip, Hitler-like ideas feel much more current and contemporary. The bell curve. The horror.

For those wanting to connect the dots, this portion of the TPC’s plan was authored by Sarah Dillard, a (recent) Harvard Business School grad and former US DOE staffer. This portion of the plan is fully in-line with the Gates Foundation Teacher Effectiveness Initiative, as implemented by MCS staffer Tequilla Banks.

MCS seemed to be fighting an uphill battle with getting SCS on board with the reforms, but the superintendents jointly sent a letter asking to the Gates Foundation asking for additional funding to incorporate SCS into the work already underway in MCS.

All of this is to say that I don’t think this originated with the TPC, but rather is an extension of already-existing “reforms”. The disappointing part is that the TPC simply did not seek education on the national discussion of these issues, or seek to understand the role that they are playing to advance a particular “side”.

In terms of teacher representation on the TPC, it’s absolutely true that the unions were not involved. Of course, only MCS has a real union that has traditionally negotiated with the district. SCS only has a teachers’ association, with no bargaining power – a fact which makes SCS administrators very proud. Part of it is a function of SCS hiring from within as you go up the ranks and taking better care of its people than MCS. Part of it is that the politics of the city and the county are very different, and MCS has long had an acrimonious relationship with its teachers. But let’s keep in mind that the teachers’ unions in TN are sweating since they are no longer permitted to collectively bargain. As of last summer, if they get enough votes, they will be permitted to engage in a “collaborative discussion,” but if the district does not want to enter into a contract, it does not have to. The TPC’s recommendations are, again, fully in-line with where TN is politically.

Employees of both “unions” attended many of the TPC meetings (at least according to the committee minutes), but I have yet to see an actual measured, academic response to any of what the TPC has put forward. If they’re going to, it’s past time.

In terms of process, what is currently being considered is the draft of the TPC’s plan. Both the school board and Rhee-ex-husband TN Ed Commissioner are reviewing it in order to provide comments. The TPC will then consider what changes to make, if any, vote on the plan again (if needed) – then the plan is officially submitted to the Board and the Commissioner for formal consideration. Turns out the law does not require the plan to be adopted by either the Board or the Commissioner – it just requires that the TPC go through the exercise.

I hope that teachers are paying attention, but since this is all tied to Gates, I suspect that resistance is futile even if the TPC’s plan is not approved. The Board has already approved all of the Gates intiatives.

Anna, to my knowledge, Haslam’s ideas for raising average class size and allowing districts to redesign their pay scales didn’t even make it to a vote this year. Am I right? Undoubtedly, he’ll propose the same things again next year. But in the case that the legislature doesn’t pass them, how then can the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative, the TPC, or anyone else lawfully push a new pay structure? I suspect I’m missing something.

Yes, correct on class size and pay scale. The gov has already said he’ll tweak them and bring them back next year.

The TPC decided not to get involved in the compensation quagmire – it had enough to do with deciding whether or not to “level up” teacher salaries. MCS teachers (on average) are paid $300 more per year than SCS teachers (worth noting, however, that SCS principals are paid (on average) almost $20,000 more per year than MCS principals). TPC punted, and decided that it would level up even though the law does not require it (just requires no downward adjustment), but not until the third year of the merged district – there being a three year transition under the state law for setting the new maintenance of effort. TPC does, as far as I can tell, generally support the compensation reform, but would not go so far as to find funding for it. Originally, the compensation reform was going to be funded by all of the “efficiencies” gained from terminating ineffective teachers, but those “efficiencies” are now going toward the loss of $68 million/year from Memphis (since it gave up its charter) and the additional loss of funding due to anticipated enrollment drops (due to charters and the ASD). Got it?

So to your question – the way TEI worked was that first, MCS applied to Gates. MCS would have required state legislation allowing those TEI changes to take place. At the same time, Tennessee applied for RTTT, basically plagiarizing the MCS Gates application and TEI. Tennessee won RTTT, and implemented a slightly-tweaked form of MCS’s teacher evaluation system (all based on Michelle Rhee’s DC Impact system). That’s how we ended up with TEM in MCS and TEAM in SCS. MCS then had to apply (and then received) an exemption from the state system so that it could implement its original version of teacher eval.

I’m sure that the gov’s proposal was to anticipate the process on how to allow the compensation reforms to go through – just make it statewide, then MCS doesn’t have to be the exception. Regardless, the state would have to allow the new pay structure. But with a stamp of approval from Commissioner Huffman, looks like TN in on that track . . .

The rest of the state hates Memphis, and educationally, Memphis “drags down” the rest of the state. The legislature, as I see it, will be happy to “reform” teacher compensation in Memphis – question will just be whether they will treat their teachers in their districts as shabbily.

Diane, first of all, the HR Dept in Memphis really is terrible. There have been tremendous improvements since TNTP was contracted to run the staffing and recruitment office a few years ago. Not only did TNTP move the timeline up so that Memphis no longer has to settle for everyone else’s leftovers, they also made the application process much more rigorous. When HR was in charge, all you needed to interview with a principal was an application with info proving that you were eligible to teach in TN. Now, you have to provide thoughts about instruction and classroom management and you have to have a phone interview with the office before being passed on to principals for hire.

Also, when only 4% of high school graduates are college-ready, as is the case in Memphis, should 95% of teachers get satisfactory reviews, as has been the case? And, really, most first-year teachers are less than satisfactory, whether they come from TFA or traditional teacher prep programs.

The point is to identify areas of need so that targeted PD and possibly some mentoring can be provided. The point isn’t to fire teachers, but to help them get better. To do that, you can’t lie to them and say that they’re doing great when they’re not; you have to provide an honest assessment and then provide the supports needed to improve.

Ah, yes. TNTP – the TFA spin-off formerly known as The New Teacher Project – first run by Michelle Rhee. They have a plum contract. But that’s for another day . . .

Writing instead on the college-ready statistics. SCS has long touted its college-ready statistics – over 60%! – particularly in comparison to MCS’s dismal 4%. Turns out they were talking about different statistics. Both districts were using ACT scores (every junior in TN is required to take it), but SCS was looking at the % of students who scored 19 and above on the test – 19 being the overall score necessary to get a HOPE (lottery-funded) scholarship. MCS was looking at the % of students who get 19 or above on ~every~ section of the test. That SCS number is 20%. 20% is obviously better than 4% – still dismal.

Also – I haven’t seen the final numbers since they’re still in tenure hearings, but MCS terminated 150 teachers this year, and they’ve acknowledged that some portion of that number is terminated based only on evaluations – the remainder for other reasons, or other for other reasons (insubordination, etc.) + evaluation.

When performance reviews consistently give high marks to almost everyone – including people who are not performing well – the evaluation system is useless. Later on, in a situation where someone gets laid-off they are stunned because they were told they were an “A” performer. So, in a situation where leaders think they are being kind or don’t have the courage to give a tough message about performance, stack ranking forces that.

Also, there are times when employees want to know exactly where they stand. A teacher sees a promising opportunity in another school and has to decide whether or not to pursue it. If she received an “A” in her evaluation but stack ranks 35 out of 40 teachers in her school, she may falsely belief she is performing very well where she is and pass on the opportunity.

The third condition is culture and this is probably the most important condition. In the private sector there are company cultures where the majority of people WANT to know where their performance ranks relative to their peers. They want to know if they are in the top 20%, the next 20%, etc.

I believe the culture in public education is different from the culture in some private sector businesses. I don’t think stack ranking – including actually giving people the data on where they rank – is generally going to do anything positive for teachers.

Some questions I have for Diane (and others who want to chime in): What should we do in situations where an evaluation system tells virtually everyone they are doing a great job? In reality, employees are always stack ranked (in the mind of their leaders). Don’t we do a great disservice to people when we don’t give them honest feedback about how their performance really rates?

I’ve already said I don’t think stack ranking would be effective in public education. But how do we make sure teachers get honest evaluations rather than fluff? And what percentage of teachers do you think are getting honest evaluations today?

I don’t know the answer to any of these question, just think they are good to discuss.

I read your posts carefully. I think you ask good questions, but the way things are in my state, I have to say most teachers do get evaluations that are accurate and honestly make suggestions to improve. I would say in 26 years of teaching I can think of about five not very good teachers that managed to get tenure (there were more ineffective ones but they didn’t stay too long), and they eventually left before the process to get rid of them started and they knew it was starting.

The way things are now though, I don’t think the evaluation system which will tie us to test scores will be valid. I could be great one year, then mediocre, back to great, and then ineffective. There are so many factors I don’t control. Some of the test scores tied to teachers will be from kids they don’t even see and subjects they don’t even teach. How asinine is that?

Ultimately, and this will be seen as negative and cynical (come on..be a pollyanna team player) I don’t think it is going to matter. The corporate reformers or the self-appointed experts who never taught, whatever you want to call them, don’t really care. They want a cheap labor force….both young and pliable that won’t ask questions and who will easily go along with the test prep factory like instruction. Turnover every five years or so keeps costs down…don’t have to worry about pensions. A revolving door of Stepford drones are easily to control.

This isn’t about children, teaching and learning. This is about Privatization and profiteering. I know you don’t agree but that is what I see here in CT. Let’s face it few of these deformers have kids who attend public school and they probably didn’t either.

The veterans have to figure out how to make it through the next 5-8 years without a target on our backs because we are the expensive lazy ones sucking up all the taxpayer money. Many are finding ways to retire early and many will just leave.

By the time Boston Consulting Group, Stand on Children and all the
rest of them are done and bored with us, they may have destroyed
the system.

I’m glad your experience to-date with teacher evaluations has been positive. The experiences that I hear about from other teachers span a very wide spectrum.

The new evaluations tied to student growth as measured by student test scores have the POTENTIAL to be a good force in education. I emphasize the word “potential” because there are so many barriers to this trend turning out well for anyone involved – teachers, parents, students, reformers, etc.

I won’t write a novel on the subject but rather list the factors that I see necessary to have a chance for a good outcome:

1) These measures are used as one of a number of factors that go into teacher evaluation.

2) They comprise no more than 20-30% of a teacher’s evaluation. Basically, not the majority of the evaluation.

3) For teachers with a successful track record, results from these tests should not be used to judge performance until there is at least 3 years worth of data.

4) The data should be used more as a formative assessment that, in conjunction with other feedback, makes sure teachers get the professional development and coaching they need if they are not being successful.

5) The data on individual teachers should never be published.

6) Teachers should never be evaluated for children they don’t see or subjects they don’t teach.

I’m sure there are things I’ve left off the list.

One of the thing that saddens me is that education leaders have played such a small role in the formation of these kinds of measures and, now, the implementation of these measures. Rather than going on the offensive and pushing for the responsible use of these kinds of measures – and defining what responsible use looks like – they just said “no, these are bad, they will never be useful, not under any condition, for any reason, anywhere” and stuck their head in the sand.

And now they, and sadly teachers across America, are on the defensive and having these things imposed on them along with major violations of one or more of the six things I listed above.

It’s so sad that teachers end up taking the brunt of this. Teachers deserve better leadership — leaders who can effectively engage with politicians, reformers, the public, and create a new compact for how the public education and teaching should function in the 21st century.

This doesn’t mean rolling over and letting the reformers run the show. But it does mean having a vision that people can rally around, energizing teachers to organize and fight (successfully), winning allies back that have been lost, and reclaiming the high ground in the debate.

None of this is happening today.

I know plenty of reformers. The biggest misperception of the large majority of reformers (my opinion) is that they are profiteers or are in involved for personal gain. Most of the reformers I know are spending money and time on education policy with no hope (or way) to get anything back personally out of what they are doing. There are bad apples in every bunch so I know there are a few who may be looking at education reform as a money machine but that’s not close to the dominant paradigm.

Regarding privatization, again, I don’t know any reformers who want to privatize education for the sake of destroying public education or just to say privatization is great. For them it is a means to an end and they honestly believe this will result in better outcomes for children.

I have always said that charter schools should be held to a higher standard than true, public schools. Reformers say that they need schools with more freedom, fewer rules, more accountability, etc., they are getting that in a number of places, well, how is that going?

It turns out it’s a mixed bag. Some good, some bad, most appear to be doing no better than true public schools.

But I have never seen education leaders approach the debate this way. They have backed themselves (and by default teachers) as being opposed to charter schools on principle. They say charters are NEVER good and they NEVER can be good. Well, they can be good but most of them are proving no better (and some are worse) than what we already have. So what is all of that freedom and accountability buying our children and teachers. Nowhere near what has been promised from what I see.

Because education leaders have been in no-mode on charters on principle for so long, I believe the broader public does not see these leaders as credible on the subject. Another self-inflicted wound, another opportunity lost, and on a matter where I believe educators could have already prevailed and gotten the outcome they wanted.

Until teachers have effective leadership, reformers will continue to have the ear of our top political leaders and the public will be clamoring for more change.

Ed, VAM shouldn’t be used in a teacher’s evaluation at all. It is not scientifically or mathematically valid. At some point, we will need teachers who get fired using this system to band together and form a class action suit. This stuff would never hold up in a court of law.

I’m curious as to why you think Randi Weingarten, a very busy person, took the time not only to read this book but also to write the Foreword?

And why she says:

“There is so much about value-added models that parents, teachers, and administrators don’t understand.”

“Harris presents a convincing argument that value-added’s imprecision need not be a deal breaker as long as we understand where it comes from and how to account for it when these measures are used in schools. We cannot expect any measures of teacher quality – value-added or others – to be perfect.”

“It [this book] is written by an expert, but for teachers and parents.”

“That’s why I strongly encourage not only teachers, but also administrators and other school officials, to read this book closely.”

Do you mind if I ask what your profession is and if you have ever taught children for an extended period of time?

I am not a member of the AFT and from my readings and discussions with other teachers, I am not sure Randi has an enthusiastic base who think she is properly representing the profession. Our work environments and the childrens’ learning environments are one in the same….this is not merely about our jobs, which is how it is slanted by some.

You are not going to convince many here on the VAM system. Another group of professors, this time from Georgia recently spoke out against it.

Yes, in a public school that was a mix of children from low-SES and lower-middle-class families. As you can imagine we had a very wide spectrum of families and children. Some of the families were borderline homeless. Lots of fractured families. Probably 30% English-language-learners. One of the school’s strength was parent involvement and you know how much of a positive difference that makes.

I don’t expect to convince teachers that VAM is good for them. I believe there is good VAM and bad VAM and want teachers to understand the difference. If you’re involved in negotiations and you’re getting VAM, there are ways to structure it that are fairer and more appropriate than other ways of structuring it.

They plan to use VAM scores are part of teacher evaluations after 2 years of scores are available. I think it should be after 3 years are available. Either way, VAM is coming.

I heard there was a writeup on this in the Wall Street Journal this week but I don’t get that and have not seen it. I may walk down to the library and check it out.

If education leaders were doing a good job representing their members, they would create a VAM Bill of Rights, explain it to their membership and the public, and get support for it among those groups as well as political allies It would lay out requirements for any VAM measurement, especially when that measurement will be used as a component of a teacher’s performance evaluation.

All I see is education leaders playing defense (badly) and when that happens, teachers lose out. When teachers lose out, children generally lose out too.

Are you a classroom teacher responsible for planning lessons or are you in an adminstrative position? What level? Elementary, Middle, High School?

VAM is just going to push more teaching to the test, drill to kill, mind numbing nonsense. I would not place my child in a school that values test scores as a way to evaluate teachers and guess who else wouldn’t? Our president, Gates, Bloomberg, Rahm Emanuel, Christie…none of their kids attend or attended public schools with high stakes tests..and the rest of the know nothing reformers. It is for other peoples’ children and guess what, not mine either.

Ed, I think Peer-Assisted Review is one model of evaluation that’s more productive than the style we’ve seen driven by RTTT. At the end of this piece, Linda Darling-Hammond addresses PAR as well as standards-based assessments.

I like some elements of the rubric, particularly the categories for questioning, academic feedback, thinking, and problem-solving. There are others, though, such as standards/objectives and grouping that have suffered partly from their wording and partly from a diversity of interpretation among evaluators. For example, the grouping category doesn’t indicate anywhere that students MUST be arranged in some sort of cooperative learning groups, but in conversations I’ve had with teachers from various schools, some evaluators have interpreted it as such.

I’d like to see a rubric that distinguishes between the sorts of practices one would expect in any class and those that aren’t integral or even appropriate for a given lesson or set of content. Similarly, I’d like to see a recognition that a “lesson” may extend over one class period and that what an evaluator observes one day might be more properly defined as a “sub-lesson” in some cases.

If you can have any impact on the top two or five or ten education leaders in America (define these leaders anyway you see fit) please tell them they need a vision and positive agenda that can win the hearts and minds of political leaders and the public.

You present an idea above on PAR. You may be absolutely right that it is more productive and more effective and will get better results for teachers and children than what is being driven by RTTT.

So why can’t education leaders make this case effectively? Knee-jerk reaction is to blame reformers but there will always be well-funded opponents who see the world in a different way. They are not going anywhere but they can be countered 10x more effectively than is happening today.

Please be a force for getting the right people representing the teaching profession and the children involved here.